Page 26 of Mazywood

“All right,” Johnny said. “We can go to her lodge. And let’s tell them they’re about to have a little brother or sister. It’s time.”

Johnny Washington would have said anything to bring a smile to his wife’s face.

Tasha Morrison Washington didn’t realize how weary she felt until she stood alone on her front porch and stared at her neighbors’ houses trussed in twinkling lights. Every lawn sprouted displays of elves, reindeer, and pale- or brown-skinned Santas. Across the street, the Fishers had a Kwanzaa kinara in the window with unlit candles in red, black, and green. New couples walked their toddler children with stumbling steps or helped older children balance their bicycles, carbon copies of her and Johnny years ago, mimicking their every step. The front porch at dusk was supposed to be Tasha’s happy place. Growing up in an Oakland row house in a neighborhood fighting to stay afloat, Tasha had dreamed of living on a street like this her entire childhood, with images of The Cosby Show dancing in her head.

Now all of it made Tasha feel old. And tired.

After the girls’ shrieks of excitement when they learned about the weekend snow trip, Sharise had driven Imani to a nearby sporting goods store to buy new ski jackets they insisted they needed, and Johnny had retreated to their bedroom to sleep off his day. When Tasha was alone, her newfound sadness always found her and stole her thoughts.

Since Imani had lost her childlike fascination with Christmas last year, Tasha was the first one in the family who had thought about digging the Christmas decoration boxes out of the garage, hanging the wreath on the door, trying to keep pace with her street’s decorating frenzy the way they conspired to make their street look like a haunted gauntlet for Halloween. She had enjoyed it, hadn’t she? Or had she only performed so convincingly that she’d fooled herself? This year, she’d brought out the wreath and laid down the reindeer displays to untangle them from the green outdoor extension cords, but it had immediately felt like a burden. She resented it, actually. Why was she the only one keeping up their tradition? Had everyone, including her, decided that Christmas decorations were her purview under her immense role as Mom?

As soon as Sharise had taken her SAT, signaling that her older daughter’s days at home were nearing an end, Tasha had sworn to herself that she would not grow despondent like some of Johnny’s older friends, who felt like they were rattling around purposeless when their children left home. Oh, hell no! Sure, she felt misty remembering baby teeth and fat cheeks, but any melancholy had always been replaced by a soaring sense of possibility.

Having only Imani at home would mean fewer meetings, fewer practices, fewer arguments to referee. She would have five years to bond to her younger daughter like never before, and then the house would belong to her and Johnny again. Tasha had actively fantasized about resettling into her life with Johnny like an extended vacation. First on her list: travel. She’d already signed up for an Afrofuturism conference in Toronto in the spring, a reward to the starving international traveler within that she had been ignoring for so many years. Tasha had gotten her master’s degree in English literature at the University of Sussex and expected to fill up her passport with stamps, but she hadn’t left the country for pure pleasure since Sharise was born. (Not counting Johnny’s shoots in Vancouver and Budapest, which had sounded exciting in concept, but only amounted to managing the kids in a cramped hotel suite while Johnny was on set.)

A low, sharp bark from Nala, the pit bull next door, made Tasha jump—an unlucky squirrel had caught Nala’s eye, its pluming tail whisking from sight through the fence’s slats. That dog was sweet to her owner, but had an irrepressible instinct to chase, and Tasha braced to hear a squeal of pain while the two animals scurried through dead leaves. None came. Good luck, squirrel.

Wetness tugged at Tasha’s eyelids; she’d been shedding tears without realizing it. Again. Lately she woke to tears, and tears rocked her to sleep. Now tears had sprung from standing on her porch surrounded by other people’s joy. Aside from Mama dying and her bad breakup in college, Tasha rarely thought, I’m sad, so the words awed her anew when they lighted in her thoughts. Through meditation and yoga and journaling and therapy she’d practiced since childhood, she had one of the most stable dispositions of anyone she knew. But not anymore.

She was a liar, and because she was a liar, she was a sad mess.

Tasha went back inside the house and slipped into Johnny’s empty office adjacent to the foyer, since he was lying down in their bedroom. Johnny was devastated about his movie, and their bedroom didn’t have the space for simultaneous breakdowns.

What was she doing? Why did she keep steering them toward a future with a baby?

Tasha had ordered a pregnancy test when she was home alone after it dawned on her that her missing period might not be menopause—a terrifying scenario she didn’t share with Johnny because there was no reason to send them both into a panic. She’d stopped refilling her prescription for the pill, but she’d barely been able to get pregnant with Imani thirteen years ago—no, nearly fourteen, starting from when she’d conceived—so there was no fucking way.

Positive. Tasha took a second test to be sure, and the result was the same. Positive.

Tasha’s shriek of anguish when she saw the second result had spurred Nala to bark outside her bathroom window. Nala was the only one who knew Tasha’s true heart, and the only one who had offered any comfort.

From that moment on, Tasha had decided that no one except God would ever know her original reaction to her pregnancy. She didn’t want that story hanging over her new baby’s head, or even in the shadowy wings of her memory. Tasha had drowned her eyes in Visine and practiced a happy voice—because the only person who would want another baby less than she did was Johnny. She practiced a joke to help the news go down better: One more person to help take care of us when we get old. (But weren’t they nearly “old” now? Especially Johnny?)

She was sure that if she showed any weakness of resolve from the start, they would not have the baby. Tasha knew this in every pore in her body. Johnny’s fears would become hers, and hers would become his, and they would make a difficult trip to a clinic—and afterward they might hold each other and eat sushi and watch the silliest movie they could find the way Elf had helped her recover from her first miscarriage while they were trying to conceive Imani.

And the days would go on as usual. And Sharise would go to college. And Imani would become their sole focus at home until she went to college too. And then…

And then she would think, What have I done?

This scenario terrified Tasha. Although she already asked herself that question every day, at least this way she would not spend the rest of her life wondering who their last child was supposed to be. She could never hate her own child—so the child would help her past her fear. And eventually she and Johnny would forget about the version of their lives that was supposed to be starting over without children. They would change diapers and dab alcohol on scrapes and tell bedtime stories and teach their child how to ride a bicycle, all over again.

Tasha’s frame trembled with another sob. If that was the future she truly wanted, why was her sadness so overpowering? And did she have a right to a future founded on wearing such a deceptive mask with Johnny, the child’s father? Asking him to sacrifice so much?

She’d suffered a three-year struggle after Sharise was born, including two miscarriages almost as soon as she’d conceived, the reason their daughters had a five-year gap between them. They had taken the first step in the adoption process, scheduling a home study from a social worker only days before she learned she was pregnant with Imani. If Imani was their miracle baby, how could this one be less a miracle? How could she raise that question even in the quietest part of her mind, when their daughters were so precious?

Johnny’s office would be the nursery, they had decided. She was already using the nook in their bedroom as her office, so they would hire a contractor to add on a room for Johnny on the far side of the back patio, near their orange trees. That was the plan when they thought Johnny was getting his movie, anyway. In the past, anticipating a new child’s birth had made Tasha’s mind race with decorating plans. Now she only saw the work ahead. The expense.

Tasha often felt like an intruder in this space where Johnny holed himself up to field calls and write, but more so tonight. They had vigorously redecorated the rest of the house over the years, but this room retained the light pink paint of his mother’s childhood. Johnny’s Misery Swamp and Frat House Haunting posters were framed above his L-shaped desk by the window, but the far wall was a shrine to his mother’s childhood: Sadie Washington’s framed photo backstage with Sammy Davis Jr., her girlish grin as wide as the sky. Happy photos with her older brother, Johnny’s uncle Ricky, also dead now, posing on the front porch that was eerily unchanged. A photo of young Sadie with a beloved black cat.

But not a trace of the woman who had built the house, who was starkly absent. Erased.

This was Tasha’s other secret, which complicated the first: Although Johnny was averse to even talking about his grandmother, she had decided to write a book about Mazelle Washington called Little Girl Lost, researching her history from the silent era in Hollywood to her nearly forgotten Lazy Mazy franchise from the 1940s. Tasha had only sketched out an opening chapter and an outline, so she had hoped she could race through researching and writing her book next summer and find a publisher by fall. It was a tight schedule, but she hadn’t published a book in ten years—and she needed to publish for tenure. Her department head had hinted that her application might not withstand scrutiny without it.

Now that she was pregnant, her summer of writing was in jeopardy. And for the first time in twenty years, she had lied to her husband—not just claiming she only wanted to go to Bear Creek Lodge for the girls, but the ongoing lie she had been carrying since the day she found out she was pregnant.

Tasha felt trapped, and it was a trap of her own making. She knew she could stop her tears and lift a weight from Johnny’s shoulders if she went to the bedroom and said they should make an appointment at the clinic. He might disagree at first, but then he would remember he didn’t want another baby either—not really, except to try to please her—so what were they disagreeing about? It would be that easy.

She needed to tell him. And he needed to hear it. Yesterday, they’d had a plan. Now, just like that, they didn’t. The only time Tasha had seen that dim, hollow-eyed look on her husband’s face was after his mother’s funeral.